ES Trading Journal with Supply and Demand for Charity

Hello Everyone

Over the weekend I went to a local charity event and as I was driving home I had a lightbulb moment. I had the idea to instead of just donating a check to my 2 favorite charities, I thought I would open a separate trading account and fund it with $1,000 dollars and trade the Emini ES and trade it from August 1st 2011 to the end of the year and then donate the funds to my 2 favorite charities.

Why do it on Mike's you might be asking, well I have a twofold reason. I will post all my trades and also explain why I took them and hopefully might be able to pay it forward as to what I have learned through trading to fellow traders. Secondly, if after a few months of following this thread people have learned anything and are so inclined to donate too, then the charities win too.

Let me explain how I trade and why it works. I have been trading since 2003 everything from stocks to forex. It took me a few times of blowing my account to get it but here I am in 2011 and happy with my success. I don't profess to know it all and would say my style of trading is not for everyone. I do it my way because it works for me. Will it work for you? I don't know. Trading is all about discipline and patience, so if you don't have it, then you will not succeed no matter what system you try.

Supply and Demand and Price action is how I trade. For the purposes of disclosure, I run a website on the side for trading and am not doing this for any other purposes other than charity. I will try to explain my style of trading over the next few months and hope fellow traders are interested in learning. I am a trader first so if my teaching style is blunt and to the point, sorry in advance, I dont mean to hurt anyone's feelings.

My methods are simple but my style is different. I always say when people want to join my site that you should be ready to forget everything you ever learned about trading because it will hinder your success. As a former Marine I trade using one strategy...

S.M.E.A.C. Situation, Mission, Execution, Administration and Command/Control

I consider trading the markets like war, every trade you take is a battle that will be won or lost. Make no mistake about it, you will lose battles. Let me say that again, you will lose battles. The goal of combat is to win the war.

Think of your trading account as grunts on the battlefield, you as their commander are responsible to lead them into a battle with a plan of entry and exit just in case centcom (central command) gave you the wrong intel. If you are right, you win the battle and save your troops for another battle. If you are wrong, It is your duty to call a ceasefire, retreat and reassess the situation while preventing excessive casualties. There is no shame in retreating and coming back another day with more firepower and correct intel. The goal is not to win the WAR in a day.

The goal is to win the WAR by winning most of the battles. As a commander your EGO gets checked at the door, I say again, no room for EGO’s here. I have one thing on my mind “Mission Accomplishment.“

I fight these daily battles with Supply and Demand and PA. I don't try to grind it out fighting all day for 4 to 8 points daily on the Emini S&Ps. I aim for 6 ticks a day and if I reach it, then it is a successful day.
I know what your thinking, I cant make a living on 6 ticks a day. I beg to differ.

Lets break it down. 1 point for 1 contract in the ES is $50.00 (4 ticks @ $12.50 each). So 1 to 2 points a day trading the Eminis is $50 to $100 a day. If you are disciplined and can consistently hit singles and doubles and average 1 to 2 points with one contract in the Eminis, then you made it.

When you are comfortable and mentally ready, move up to 2 contracts per trade. Don’t do anything different, still your goal is to make 1 to 2 points a day. But now your 1 to 2 points a day equal daily profits of $100 to $200 a day. if you keep that consistency, sooner than later you will be trading 10 Emini contracts, then 20 Emini contracts per trade and still just be averaging 1 to 2 points a day but your daily profits will be $500 to $2,000 per trading day.

Lets run the numbers, lets say you average 1 1/2 points a day, with 10 contracts per trade equals $750 a day, $3,750 a week, $195,000 a year.(20 contracts per trade equals $1,500 a day, $7,500 a week, $390,000 a year).
Remember, we didn’t do anything different other than raise our contract size. The trades are still the same, 1 to 2 points a day. The only thing you will be doing is clicking the quantity amount to a 10 or 20 lot before you execute your order. That’s it. so if you can make $100.00 a day consistently, you can make 1/2 a million a year in profitable trades in the Emini Futures.

By no means do I profess that this works for everyone. It is up to the individual trader to assess that on his own.
I will say that I will take $1,000 trading account and trade the Emini ES for 6 points a day using 1 contract and when I reach $2,000 I will trade 2 lots and so forth and so on. I plan to double the charity account on a monthly basis.

My system works because it is in essence building consistency and once you have it the only thing you are doing different is raising your lot size. Don't take my word for it – just come back and check often. I will post the account statement on here so everyone can see.

Sorry for the long post. My next post will break down exactly how I trade.

Thanks and health and profits to all.


-George
Lead, follow or get out of the way!!!

Good luck, its a good idea and I'll probably do that myself someday when I have a proven record.

What are the two charities?

YouAreNotFree said:

Good luck, its a good idea and I'll probably do that myself someday when I have a proven record.

What are the two charities?

Click to expand...

Hi youarenotfree.

Thanks for checking out my journal.

My 2 charities are the wounded warrior project and ASPCA.

I am a former Marine and love animals. I have 3 dogs, 1 kingsnake and a newt.

-G
Lead, follow or get out of the way!!!

Trading rules for this ES journal

Ok lets break it down on I am going to trade this thread.

The rules are as follows:

$1,000 dollars in a futures account starting August 1st.

1 contract traded until account reaches $2,000 dollars then move to trade 2 contracts.

1 contract added every other $2,000 dollars earned.

The goal is 4 to 8 ticks a day.

Risk reward per trade is at minimum 1:1

Commisions are $5.00 round trip (rounded up to make it easier to track)

Actual commisions will be shown on statements.

If I have 2 losers in a row on the same day, the trading day stops.

3 trades max a day. No minimum. If no trades setup then I sit on my hands.

Max stop is 8 ticks for an 8 tick profit target.

Stop can be moved to breakeven at my discretion based on market momentum.

Targets can be moved at my discretion based on market momentum.

I will cover more on these as the days go on.

-G
Lead, Follow or get out of the way!!!

The first Emini ES trade for this journal 6 tick profit

Here is my first trade for this journal.

Short ES @ 1273.50 (1052 CST) for 6 ticks profit.


Order execution for Emini ES Trade 8-1-11

Lets break it down

The Market has been on a severe downtrend all morning. On a confirmed downtrend we always sell the rallies (trading 101).


Emini NinjaTrader Chart for ES trade 8-1-11

As the market was retracing to the north, I was looking for a sign of exhaustion. On the footprint chart you can see that the selling started coming in to stop the demand. On the bar before my entry( the doji bar) I saw the the sell volume significantly overtake the buyvolume. Out of 14,500 contracts traded, 8,000 were hitting the bid. Thats a 60/40 supply to demand push to the downside.


Emini MarketDelta Chart for ES 8-1-11

If you look at the volume profile on the right of the footprint chart, look at the valley at the 1275 price. Between 1272 and 1275.25 there is over -6000 more contracts hitting the bid throughout the day so the market would need more momentum to break thru that.

Normally I would of waited for the doji bar to be taken out to the downside as my entry but I had a lot of conviction so I was a little aggressive. It paid off 2 bars later.

Hope that wasn't too confusing.

-George
Lead, follow or get out of the way!!!

ES Charity trade 08-02-11 for 6 ticks profit

Good Morning all

This mornings trade breakdown is as follows:

Short @ 1278.00 (0852 CST) on ES for 6 tick profit

The Market was trending up since the open on both the 3000T and 750T chart. Normally we always buy the dips in an uptrend but the trend hit a temporary slowdown around the 1279.00 level. I was watching this level because it was a level I called as value in my early morning daily levels worksheet, see link below

EminiPicks Daily Levels 08-02-11

I had good conviction that this level would have a significant supply inventory and would cause some kind of reversal. On a 750T chart you can see that it was tested 3 times from 0846 CST. My eyes turned to the footprint chart and I saw point A bar that had significant selling as you can tell by the red bar and at point B the total volume for the bar was 4221 but 3453 of those contracts were hitting the bid thus signaling supply. This was after the second retest which then went on to make a lower low and came back up to restest for the 3rd time. That 3rd retest along with the entry of supply at a key level creates a high probability fade situation for my 6 tick profit target on the 750T chart.

I entered on the next bar at orange flag on chart @ 1278 and never took any heat for a 6 tick profit down to 1276.50 and out 2 min later.



Footprint ES Emini Trade Chart 08-02-11


Key levels are important specially on these days that it looks like the market is going to be consolidating. One thing to remember is that you have to figure out first what the market is doing. trending or bracketing and then plan your trades accordingly. I know this sounds like basic novice principles but a whole lot of traders forget to do the basics and thats what gets them in trouble.

Discipline and Patience will get you lucky.

12 ticks profit for August 2011.


-G
Lead, follow or get out of the way!

I love this journal already and i love your outlook on life, will be watching with interest

Emini charity trade 08-03-11 - 2 trades 12 ticks profit

Good morning all

here is the breakdown of the 2 trades

short @ 1250 0839CST for 6 tick profit

Short @ 1249.50 0909CST for 6 tick profit

Here is the play by play



Emini Profit Trade Price Action



Emini Profit Trade EminiPicks Squeeze

Hope fully the charts are able to explain how the trades played out. If anyone needs more explanation just ask.

24 ticks profit so far for August.

See you all tomorrow.

Lead, follow or get out of the way!!!

-G

Feedback on posting style?

As I look back at the posts I see that the chart images are way to big and clutter the post.

Is anyone having a hard time reading the posts as I am posting them or is there a better way to make it look more fluid.

I upload large pics so viewers can look at the details in the chart and understand them.

Any feedback or ideas on how to post properly would be appreciated and thanks to all for your encouragement.

Ciao for now

-G
Lead, follow or get out of the way!!!

No offence but this place is full of spammers.

Is there any evidence that you have taken any trades as opposed to setting up what is a particularly good attempt at internet forum marketing?

If you are for real, my hat off to you. Still, there's a lot of dodgy vendors here and the screen shots you display could easily be replicated without a single live trade being taken.

DionysusToast said:

No offence but this place is full of spammers.

Is there any evidence that you have taken any trades as opposed to setting up what is a particularly good attempt at internet forum marketing?

If you are for real, my hat off to you. Still, there's a lot of dodgy vendors here and the screen shots you display could easily be replicated without a single live trade being taken.

Click to expand...

Dionysus

I appreciate your concern and i am aware of all the scammers in our industry. Unfortunately I cannot be responsible for the action of others and also would like to be judged on my merit alone.

My mom raised me with integrity and the Marine corps reinstilled it in me as a life long principle to live by. I have been blessed to be able to live a life style that i can give back to the things i love and cherish.

I truly believe in pay it forward and if this is a way to pay it forward then it works for me. I in no way am asking people to go to my website or buy anything. Everything i am sharing here is free and am just asking if you learn something and it makes you money then feel free to pay it forward. Don't pay it forward to me but to somebody or charity that might need it.

I will be posting monthly totals and At the end of the the year when this is over, i will post a copy of the checks i will send to the charities and maybe motivate people to do the same if they feel so inclined.

I welcome you and any other member to follow along and check progress and in december we will hopefully celebrate a profitable 5 months and funds for the charities.

I apologize for the lenghty response but I want to keep this thread positive and hopefully have it move in a good direction.

Thanks

-G
Lead, follow or get out of the way!!!

OK - is there any way you could post a statement of account to show you have actually placed live trades in this thread? In particular, you have posted evidence of trades as follows:



This appears to be a shot of Ninjas trade log with a lot of columns removed and fees set at $5 r/t as opposed to what your broker actually charges.

In this pic you claim to have entered because the 'inside bar' closed below the doji - yet you managed to enter a trade on the bar whose close gave you the signal.



These things will not go unnoticed here. The stuff you have shown so far could easily be achieved on SIM/Replay.

I notice at the top you say "Why do it on Mike's you might be asking, well I have a twofold reason" - do I presume you tried this on BigMikeTrading anf quickly got kicked off?

If there's real trading going on behind this, you could resolve it with a single image. Sending $2000 to charity does nothing if you get $20,000 worth of customers from it.

There is a guy on this forum called pboyles. You might want to search his posts. I reckon you should put up an account statement before he notices this thread

dionysustoast

Ok where do I start.

First off let me say my intention is to keep this thread positive so in the future if you have legitimacy concerns please send me a private message and I will try to clarify and then if you are still not satisfied ( which I presume you won't be) then you can go ahead and post on the thread your concerns. It is a little bit of courtesy to everyone on this site.

If you have questions on actual trade setups please go ahead and post them because it is educational.

As for your questions, Lets take them one at a time. (your questions are in red)

Can I post a statement of an account for trades.

Sure I can download my statement and block out all the personal info and post it but your next remark will be “how do we know that is a true statement.”

Let me fill you in on something, If I was going to be as sneaky as you are proposing me to be and I wanted to scam at that level after all the time I spend creating and annotating these charts for here dont you think that creating a dummy statement is not just as easy. Regardless of what I show you, You came to this thread with a mission to discredit me and my trades so nothing will change your mind. It's kind of a shame because you could probably learn something from this thread.

This appears to be a shot of Ninjas trade log with a lot of columns removed and fees set at $5 r/t as opposed to what your broker actually charges.

You are correct, it is a ninja trade log and the commisions were set by me. You caught me... actually I caught myself. If you actually read my 4th post where I talk about rules and commisions I state:

“Commisions are $5.00 round trip (rounded up to make it easier to track)
Actual commisions will be shown on statements.”

So I myself informed the reader that I was setting commisions at that level. No slide of hand there. And like I said in my previous response to you, when this is all over, I will post the profit statement and checks to the charities on the thread and celebrate.

In this pic you claim to have entered because the 'inside bar' closed below the doji - yet you managed to enter a trade on the bar whose close gave you the signal.

Actually you are wrong again. The close of the inside bar was an entry and signal. My thought process was this bar had already done its move up and was on its way down, as an aggressive entry as long as the bar closes below the close of the previous bar it is an entry. Well normally you have to wait for the bar to close to see where it closes but I have this nifty little indicator on the right of my chart called a tick counter (you can see it on the bottom right of the chart) and since I am using a 3000 tick chart I can pretty much figure out where the bar is closing a few ticks before it closes. No magic here just simple subtraction. Like I said it is an aggressive move but if you would of read the whole post you would of known that because I also said at the end of it that:

"Normally I would of waited for the doji bar to be taken out to the downside as my entry but I had a lot of conviction so I was a little aggressive."

These things will not go unnoticed here. The stuff you have shown so far could easily be achieved on SIM/Replay.

I hope this thread will not go unnoticed. That is the point. Remember, pay it forward.

You are right. Everything could be achieved on sim replay even the charts you post. Hmmmm.

I notice at the top you say "Why do it on Mike's you might be asking, well I have a twofold reason" - do I presume you tried this on BigMikeTrading anf quickly got kicked off?

I actually was going to post it on mikes but they have a policy of no vendors posts so I am doing it here.

If there's real trading going on behind this, you could resolve it with a single image. Sending $2000 to charity does nothing if you get $20,000 worth of customers from it.
There is a guy on this forum called pboyles. You might want to search his posts. I reckon you should put up an account statement before he notices this thread.

The real question is how much did you send to charity?

Sorry, don't know Pboyles.

Hope that helps.

Please keep the thread educational and positive, at the end of the day, if this thread does not meet your fancy just don't click on it.

There are no victims in this world, only volunteers!

But if you would like to learn something stick around I guarantee it will be worth it.

Sorry to all for the long post but had to break it down to basics.

-G
Lead, follow or get out of the way

Tell you what - I promise I won't call your statement a fraud.

Here's the way to do it - block out all the personal details BUT leave in the first few characters of the account id. Those in the know can tell a real account from a SIM account.

BTW - the following is not true "You came to this thread with a mission to discredit me"

I am offering you the chance to clear this up before somebody does just that.

Emini Charity Trade 08-04-11 - 6 ticks profit

Hello all.

Sorry for the late post but I wanted to get todays trade in before I called it a night.

Here is the breakdown

Emini ES long at 1228 (0946CST) 6 tick profit.

Although not a great day for position traders and investors, as day traders we are always flat at the end of the day and these moves are what we crave.



As the market was sinking, we try to sell the rallies as I have mentioned before. In this particular trade I saw a setup I like to trade (EminiPicks 3bar squeeze) and set my stop entries. Just to explain again how I do it; when I see the setup I put a buy stop entry 1 tick above and a sell stop entry 1 tick below the 3 bar setup. I let the market take me in when it figures out what it wants to do. Sometimes the market does a head fake and puts us in the market and then rolls over and takes us for a loss but that is the name of the game. the losses are usually small because the stops are small.

A less aggressive entry would be to let it break out and wait for a retrace, which happens often. you might miss some trades but you have a higher probability trade setup. Because we were in a downtrend I would of liked to have it go to the short side but I had enough room before the trigger lines to get my 6 ticks profit.

In this same example if we were just a point or so below the trigger lines, I would of only put a sell stop entry just below and see if the market took me in. trying to go long so close to the trigger lines that are providing resistance is not good probability and although it will work sometimes, it will fail more.

Tomorrow is friday and might not trade the morning to leave early for a long weekend much needed getaway. So if I do trade I will post before I leave and if not I will resume on monday.

Thanks to all who have sent me private messages of encouragement. I hope to keep this going and keep it educational. I apologize i haven't got into too much supply and demand explanations but as we get more trades we will delve into it alot more.

30 ticks total for August.

Thanks and goodnight.

-G
Lead, follow or get out of the way

DionysusToast said:

Tell you what - I promise I won't call your statement a fraud.

Here's the way to do it - block out all the personal details BUT leave in the first few characters of the account id. Those in the know can tell a real account from a SIM account.

Click to expand...

Agree with Dionysus. I admire your effort to inform other traders and the involvment of charity. But for those who are starting out you need to show proof of your actual results.

And as far as your use of technical analysis, change the settings of your chart. Suddenly your MA's are at different levels and your hammer, doji, shooting star, hanging man have vanished! It's all about settings and the market doesn't use eminipicksdotcom his settings as a standard... Read the attachment on TA, will give you a refreshing look on the subject. People see what they want to see.

Trade well mate!

Stirf said:

Agree with Dionysus. I admire your effort to inform other traders and the involvment of charity. But for those who are starting out you need to show proof of your actual results.

And as far as your use of technical analysis, change the settings of your chart. Suddenly your MA's are at different levels and your hammer, doji, shooting star, hanging man have vanished! It's all about settings and the market doesn't use eminipicksdotcom his settings as a standard... Read the attachment on TA, will give you a refreshing look on the subject. People see what they want to see.

Trade well mate!

Click to expand...

Thanks for the pdf. I will look it over.

Unfortunately, when using tick charts no 2 charting packages will show you exactly what I am seeing. It is more of your datafeed than your software. With that being said, I do teach my people to set their charts up a certain way to minimize the variations. For example the session times make a difference and also setting the software to create a new bar at session start helps.

The only way to avoid this is to go to minute charts.

And as for those of you starting out, What you need to learn from my thread is discipline and not just concentrate on how profitable I am. I guarantee you I can post a system here that is right 90% of the time (not that I have one) and guarantee it and people will still blow their account trading it wrong because they dont have the discipline to be successful.

Too many people concentrate too much on results and not on method. I make my living as a trader and run eminipicks as a side thing not the other way around. Too many of these education trading sites dont trade and just teach and make a living as more memberships they get. They essentially couldn't make it as traders. If that was the case with me, then I wouldn't trade and work on the site all day to get the memberships.

The website is more of a challenge to me. I consider my self successful as a trader and now the next thing to conquer is to see if I can create a legacy. Some may call it an ego booster but I like to think of it as taking over the world...HaHaHa.

Sorry for the rambling but sometimes I veer of on tangents.

As to the posting the statement online on the web, as I mentioned to dyonus it wouldnt't help anyone beleive it or not. I did touch base with a moderator of t2w.com and let him know if he would like to see a trade statement I will be glad to show him as long as I have his word that it will not be posted and my info would not get out.

If he takes the option then he can post on this thread that it is real but if he doesn't want to get involved then so be it.

I have neither the extra time or the inclination to prove to every tom, dick or harry that what I do works. I am not charging for this info nor am I requesting anyone to do something for it.

If it is too unbeleivable to anyone that a trader can constantly make 6 ticks daily out of the Emini ES market, then they probably should be thinking about trading. What I do is not rocket science and I didn't invent it. I do it because it works and because I have discipline.

If at this point after reading all the posts so far and it does not seem real or you might think it is a scam, then just disregard the thread and go on your merry way.

Either way, at the end of the year, there will be 2 great charities that I will be donating money to...

I hope I didnt sound like a jerk and I hope you follow along because like I said before, it is not rocket science and it does work.

Thanks

George

Trades for the last couple of days.

Hi all

I havent posted any trades for the last couple of days because friday I took off and yesterday and today the volatility is high and I dont want to have a couple good trades go bad because my stops were too small.

My rules are at most an 8 tick stop and with the volatility these last couple of days I don't have any room for error. I'm good but not that good...hahaha.

This is what separates success from failure. being able to say I will not trade because my rules will not work in this market today.

Don't get me wrong, I have traded yesterday and today on my personal account and have made some good trades and have lost some. But I have different rules for my personal trading account as to risk reward and can absorb bigger losses if they happened.

But when I started this thread I setup rules and I have a small initial account so I dont want to put a dent in it just because I didn't have the discipline and patience to wait it out a day or two.

I hope you all keep following this thread because their should be some good days to come.

Till tomorrow.

-G
Lead, follow or get out of the way!!!

Strif

I read your pdf on technical analysis and although you are right on a few points, I disagree on most at least when it comes to what I do. I cannot confirm or attest for the abilities of anyone else.

In your document, you state that TA cannot predict the future of the markets. I don't think that I ever said or mentioned that looking at charts you will be able to predict the future.

As a matter of fact, if you go back and read my setups you will notice that one of my setups is a 3 bar squeeze. If I was trying to predict the market, I wouldn't put an entry below and above the price action. I would just use my predicting abilities and predict which way the market was going to go and trade that way.

Unfortunately I don't have that ability, but I do have the ability to recognize patterns in price action and supply and demand and figure out which ones happen more often that not and along with money and risk management I can successfully make a great living trading futures.

Other that sometimes a moving average, I don't use these indicators that you rant about so much as being lagging and incorrect. I look at price and look at volume and jump on board when the markets makes a move. Everything works sometime and nothing works all the time.

Think of it this way. you are on the side of a set of train tracks and their is a train on each track. You want to hitch a ride on one of the trains to go north but you dont know which way the trains are going to go when they start moving. What do you do.

A. do you predict which one of the 2 trains is going to go north and jump on it and hope that when it starts moving it is going in the right direction and you head north.

or

B. You wait until the train starts to move in the direction that you want to go and then and only then do you jump on board and ride it north.

If you said chose A, I have some beachfront property in death valley to sell you.

The right answer should be B.

No predicting abilities needed when trading the markets, Just common sense and analytical abilities and don't forget discipline.

If you or anyone doesn't have the analytical ability to look at markets in a technical sense that is fine and dandy but that does not mean that it does not work. It just means it does not work for you.

I appreciate that you were scammed by an online trading company and it sucks because it makes all of us in the trading community look bad. I myself when I was starting out trading went to many classes and trading rooms that were useless and not worth a cent. But it wasn't until I realized that I had the knowledge, I just didn't have the discipline that I started to make money.

With that being said, any person that has ever taken mentoring from me, has seen me trade live for at least 3 days in a row while we are training and knows it is real. My suggestion to you is to concentrate on learning and if it is too good to be true, then it probably isn't.

What I try to show people is to make 6 tacks a day. I am not one of these guys that say I make 20 to 30 ticks a day. I dont need to. I can trade 20 lots and make as much money getting 6 ticks as someone trying to grind 30 tick trading 4 lots. The more trades you take daily, the more susceptible you are for losses. Look at the system and the mechanics of it and also add common sense to it. I would love to meet someone who can consistently take 20 to 30 ticks out of the markets daily. I can't and I don't profess that I do. I do hit homeruns sometimes and get 20 to 30 but that is rarely. My consistency is hitting singles and doubles on a daily basis.

I hope that helps. I don't trade to get a high or rush from being in a trade. I trade to be profitable.

-G
Lead, follow or get out of the way!!!